


sweet

by yourloveisameme



Series: hoggy warty hogwarts [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, Candy, Dessert & Sweets, Durmstrang, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, Honeydukes, M/M, Multi, Self-Indulgent, Triwizard Tournament, blatant excuse to rant about honeydukes, theres no plot sorry just candy, this is too long I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-01-31 07:16:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12677028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourloveisameme/pseuds/yourloveisameme
Summary: Yaku works at a candy shop, Lev has a sweet tooth.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> See this humble AU was part of a bigger thing i.e. kagehina Triwizard AU i.e. LAST year's NaNo which I never finish but at least YakuLev can have their happy ending...... right?
> 
> Disclaimer: this is G rated but if you think 20 yos can't date high schoolers bc of that whopping 2-yr difference, bye.

“Seriously, Kenma?” Yaku muttered under his breath as he reached up towards the very top of the shelf. “You had to put the change jar on the highest shelf.” Kenma, who was sitting half-asleep with his head on the counter, didn’t answer.  
Yaku stood on his tiptoes, trying to stretch his arms further.

It was early Saturday morning and there were already kids coming into Honeydukes including the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. Behind him, he heard the bell and the sounds of kids crowding into the store, whispering, oohing and ahhing at the various sweets and goodies. “Come on...” He really wished his arms weren’t so short. “Why--” Yaku strained, feeling the muscles in his back protesting. “--couldn’t you have put it just a bit lower--”

“I can’t help it if you’re short,” Kenma said, lifting his head from the counter, yawning.

“You’re only 4 cm taller than me!”

“Just Accio it.” Kenma said, and, looking around groggily, confirming that none of the kids was ready to buy anything, he promptly went back to sleep.

Yaku flushed. He didn’t even have his wand on him; he’d left it in his bag in the back room. “Not all of us can be good at magic,” he retorted as he tried momentarily setting aside his dignity and jumping. Nope. Still too high.

“I’ll get that for you,” someone said from behind, looming over Yaku.

“W-what?” he turned around to see a very, very tall boy. Yaku hardly came up to the middle of his chest. The edge of the boy’s blood-red robes --Durmstrang robes, no wonder he’d never seen the kid before--brushed against Yaku’s face. He was too close. Way too close. Clearly he had no sense of proximity.

“Here,” said the boy, handing him the blue ceramic jar which Yaku nearly dropped as he caught it.

“Umm...thanks,” Yaku stared up at his pale face. He had neat gray hair and catlike green eyes that seemed to sparkle. “But you can’t be back here,” he said, gesturing him towards the other side of the counter.

“Okay,” he said, heading back to the other side.

“Hmph,” said Yaku, clutching the jar. “Tall people,” he muttered as he watched the boy walk away, bumping his way through the crowd, gazing wide-eyed at the products on the shelves. The kid’s limbs were unwieldy and long, as if someone had stretched him, like hand-pulled saltwater taffy. He kept jostling people as he went through, accidentally stepping on a first-year’s foot.

“Lev Haiba,” Kenma said, having woken up again. “Seventh-year Durmstrang student.”

“Yeah, I figured that much.” He glanced sideways at his friend. Kenma was often absent for hours at a time, because even though he’d graduated from Hogwarts last year, he still liked to hang around the school. So it was Kenma who kept him up to date on the goings-on at Hogwarts School of Witchraft and Wizardry.

Yaku turned towards the crowd. The kids were queuing up, holding their treats with sugar-greedy faces. It was only eleven and already they were lining up in droves, waiting for him to open the register. Two more schools meant  
dozens more people--students, staff, miscellaneous visitors. There were lots of old faces mixed in with the new ones, though. People he’d gone to school with, two years ago.

The shop was abuzz with the air of excitement. Candy never failed to make people forget, for a second, that the weather outside was dreary and there was homework to be done and a Tournament to stress about.

But it was really, truly magical for the ones who’d never seen anything like Honeydukes. Yaku remembered the first time he’d come here as a first year. Fresh out of the Muggle world, he’d followed the flock of other Slytherins like a lost sheep. And the second he stepped inside the shop he never wanted to leave. Who knew that nine years later he’d be working here?

Hours later, the sun was beginning to set in the sky and Yaku’s feet were aching. “Okay, that’s five Knuts,” Yaku said to a little girl holding a lollipop.

The girl counted the money in her hand. “But...I only have four.” She looked distraught, her eyes beginning to well up as she looked up at him with an expression that said _please don’t kill me._

“That’s okay,” Yaku said, leaning forward and taking the coins from her. He smiled at the child, and she gave a shaky half-smile back.

"Yaku, I hope you’re not giving away things for free,” said a deep voice from behind.

Yaku sighed. He glanced backwards at Kuroo, who was leaning against the counter in a casual manner as he grinned down at the girl with all his teeth showing. He was dressed in all black (the red Honeydukes apron didn’t suit someone as “suave” and “cool” as he was) and casting a long shadow. The girl froze and immediately dropped her lollipop, backing away from Kuroo’s tall, intimidating figure.

“Kid, you’re gonna have to pay for that,” he joked, and Yaku felt like facepalming because a second later the girl burst into tears and fled the scene, leaving an abadoned lollipop and the coins in Yaku’s hand.

He glared at Kuroo. “Seriously?”

Kuroo stared at the spot where the girl had been, looking worried. “Shit...I didn’t mean to make her cry...”

“You’re too scary, Kuroo,” Yaku said, stashing the change away, because what the fuck else was he supposed to do with it? “Keep standing here and you’re gonna scare all the customers away.” Secretly, he wondered how Kuroo had ever gotten to work here in the first place, let alone convince the old owner to hand over the keys when he decided to retire. Then again, Kuroo could be charming, if he wanted to. Slytherin to the core, that one.

“Hmm, you’re right,” said Kuroo, straightening up and putting his hands on his hips. “I should stick to the managing and leave the customer service to you, the small, cute and friendly bloke.”

“Ha-ha,” Yaku slammed the register shut.

Kuroo grinned at his friend. “It’s true.”

“Whatever.”

“You’re better than him, at least,” said Kuroo, gesturing towards Kenma, who was now engrossed in some book or the other and showed no signs of getting up anytime soon.

“That’s not saying much."

"Okay, well,” Kuroo glanced around the store. “Looks like the crowd’s thinning. I’m off, then.” He swept on his black traveling cloak and went to the door.

Kuroo was right; the kids had almost all gone back to Hogwarts, save for a few stragglers. Yaku was about to sit down when a person came rushing to the counter, holding so many things that Yaku couldn’t even see their face until they plopped down the stack of boxes on the counter. “You again!” Yaku said, then cleared his throat, putting on his polite voice. “I mean...er, hello, Haiba.” He glanced at the boxes, then glanced at the empty shelf where they had been taken from. “Umm...do you really need 27 boxes of Chocolate Cauldrons, 3 kilograms of treacle fudge, a mini-barrel of Every Flavor Beans, 14 Licorice Wands, 43 packs of Drooble’s Bubblegum and 108 squares of lemon ice?”

Lev nodded enthusiastically.

“A-are you sure?”

“Yes.” The boy looked so excited he was about to burst, teetering back and forth. Yaku wouldn’t be surprised if he was already on a substantial amount of sugar-- had he bought anything earlier? Yaku couldn’t remember.

He shrugged and rang up the order. “You’ll need an Expandable Bag to carry all that, unless you want to--”

“It’s fine,” Lev said. Whipping out his wand, he did some weird spell which, in 0.5 seconds, minimized the load into a size small enough to fit into his pocket. (Yaku couldn’t follow the spellwork, which made him slightly irritated.)

“Okay, then,” Yaku said, handing him a receipt. “Have a nice day.” With this much candy, the kid wouldn’t need to come back for weeks and weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the reasom the ages might seem messed up is because Hogwarts is weird and doesn’t include the 2 years of post secondary schooling that the foreign schools do.
> 
> Hence certain ppl are in school while Yaku's over here working retail ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	2. Chapter 2

Yaku was wrong.

“You can’t have eaten that many sweets in one week,” he said, rearranging the fancy wrapped nougats along the left wall. “You just can’t have.”

“I didn’t...I shared it with my friends...” Lev said, eyes darting from side to side. Yaku couldn’t help but feel that the boy was lying.“Sooooo, are there any Chocolate Cauldrons left?” the boy asked, shoving himself into Yaku’s space, causing him to bang his arm against the table.

“Oof!” Yaku rubbed his arm. “No, I don’t think so.” He walked under the boy’s arm, in the other direction to see if there were any stray Chocolate Cauldrons on the shelf. “Nope,” he said. “We’re all out.”

“Aww,” said Lev, wilting. “We don’t have them back in Russia.”

Yaku ignored the fact that the students from the other schools weren’t supposed to talk about their locations. “Well, you’ll have to come back next time.”

And he did come back. The next week. And the next. The kid had a major sweet tooth. Which wasn’t that big of a deal. They had plenty of regulars: Oikawa from Beauxbatons, who swore that the Chocolate Frogs he was buying were for his nephew; Kiyoko, the medical apprentice, who bought lollipops for the patients; Tsukishima, who often scoured the shop for strawberry-flavored items.

But none of them stayed for over an hour, following Yaku around as he fixed the shelves, checked and rechecked prices, organized the rows of chocolate lined up against the wall, restocked barrels of Every Flavor Jelly Beans.

“What’s that?” Lev asked for the tenth time, pointing to a random product.

Yaku looked. “Those are Blood Pops.”

“Oooooh, do you think I should get one?”

“No, they’re terrible, actually,” Yaku said, being a little too honest. “They taste like actual blood.” Whether or not they were made from actual blood, Yaku didn’t want to know.

“Ew,” said Lev, wrinkling his nose. “You know this one time my sister was going out with a vampire...well, we think he was a vampire....”

Yaku his eyebrows raised. “What, like Twilight?”

“Like what?”

“Never mind.” He forgot sometimes that the average wizard didnt get pop culture references. Yaku looked up at the sign above the Blood Pops. The letters were fading; he really should take that down and fix it.

Lev followed his eyes. "Hey, I'll get that." He reached forward. Lev crashed right into the display that Yaku had spent a half hour making, and the sweets came tumbling down. “Lev!” he exclaimed. “What the--” He took a deep breath, trying to calm down. “Lev, can you be more careful? Please?”

“Sorry,” Lev said. Yaku moved along, leaving him behind.

Lev seemed to think it was his duty to reach for the objects that Yaku couldn’t access due to his--well...lack of height. Lev didn’t even have to stretch or strain, he was tall enough that his arms could access pretty much any shelf. He didn’t want to admit it, but it did save Yaku the annoyance of having to perform an accio or get out a stool. Not that he was going to let him know that or anything. Yaku could take care of his own store, he didn’t need some freakishly tall, hyperactive teenager helping him.

“You were a teenager two months ago,” Kuroo reminded him helpfully when he mentioned this aloud.

Yaku ignored him. “He’s an idiot. How does one manage to get an Acid Pop in one’s eye? Tell me Kuroo, how is that possible?” Yaku said, plopping down on the windowsill of his small alcove above the shop, staring at the empty village  
below. Hogsmeade was quiet on weekdays, barren of the students and visitors who roamed these streets during the weekends--running down the pathway, laughing and talking to each other.

“Did he really?” Kuroo looked at him curiously from across the room, reclining on Yaku’s tiny bed. It used to be his own, before he started his Auror training, sleeping here and there. Odd hours, different places but most likely the flat belonging to his squadmates Bokuto and Akaashi. How Kuroo juggled an apprenticeship and his position as Honeydukes ownerwas a mystery. (Kenma theorized that Kuroo had somehow got his hands on a Time-Turner. Yaku wouldn’t be suprised. Fucking overachiever.) Then again, it was Yaku himself who managed most of the daily functions.

“Yes, according to Kiyoko,” said Yaku, “He came into the infirmary with his eye all swelled up and smoking and it took him all weekend to recover.”

Kuroo grimaced. “Sounds painful.”

“Yeah,” Yaku agreed, gnawing away at a hunk of Wizochoc that had half-melted therefore unsuitable for sale. “And how do you release a pack of Mr. Spindle’s Licorice Spiders during class and get detention for it and then have the nerve to come back here asking for a refund?”

“Did you give him a refund?”

Yaku huffed. “Of course not. We're not liable for the stupidity of customers.”

“He's a good customer, you gotta admit,” Kuroo said.

“ I guess.”

+

There was a knock at the door. Yaku frowned. Who could that be, at 8 pm at night? He crossed the store and opened the door. “What the fuck?” Yaku said. Then remembered his professionalism. “I mean--Lev, what are you doing here? It’s a Wednesday night.”

“I need more Pumpkin Pasties,” Lev said cheerily, “My roommate Tendou got into my stash and stole most of the--oh hey, is that a new flavor of exploding bonbons?”

He attempted to push past Yaku into the store, but Yaku stood with his arms crossed in front of the doorway. “We’re closed. Come back later.”

“But...but I came all the way here...”

Yaku sighed, rubbing his forehead. This boy was testing his patience. “Fine. Just this once though.” He opened the door, and Lev bounded into the shop. He rushed over to the other side of the store, bumping into the pastry stand and leaving it disorganized behind him. Sighing, Yaku straightened up the display and followed Lev to keep an eye on him.

“Pine-ya Col-ah-da,” Lev read off the box very slowly, af if the words were stuck to his tongue like badly made caramel, the kind that Honeydukes would never sell.

“Pina Colada,” Yaku corrected. “It’s pineapple flavored with Coconut Dynamite--you’d like it, it’s more explosive than the usual kind.”

“Hmm,” said Lev, examining the package. “I still think lemon is probably better. But I’m going to buy this anyway. Gonna try them out with Tendou--he’ll love them. Maybe we’ll try putting them in Superfizz Soda and watch it go all over the  
place like...BANG!”

On second thought, it might not have been a good idea to inform Lev of the explosive properties of the colorful little rounds. But oh well, the damage was done. Yaku watched him wander around the store, staring at the sweets, calling out to Yaku whenever he found something interesting.

“Okay--” said Yaku, interrupting Lev’s tangent about he and and his short orange-haired friend eating Canary Creams and momentarily turning into birds. “--but how did you get here, Lev?” Never in his three years working here had any student come to Hogsmeade other than Saturday or Sunday.

“Oh, it was easy,” Lev said. “I snuck out the window and used a Disillusionment Charm.”

“You...snuck past the Aurors?” Kuroo had mentioned nighttime guard duty before. As an Auror-in-training, guard duty was one of his jobs. They kept constant watch around-the-clock, making sure no one got in (or out), because this was a Triwizard year, and you never know what might happen. (Personally Yaku thought the dangers were probably _in_ the school, if there were any, but the presence of Aurors was reassuring to everybody, most importantly parents.)

“Yeah.”

“And...they didn’t see you at all?”

“Yep,” Lev said, wandering towards a table and examining the rows of baked goods. “They didn’t even blink. Did you make these these cookies?”

Yaku stared at him. If what he was saying was true, if Lev really had performed a disillusionment charm effective enough to work on Aurors, that was no easy feat. In N.E.W.T Charms (in retrospect, why the hell had he taken a pointless class for which he’d barely managed to scrape a passing exam score?), when they had studied high-level concealment techniques, as much as he tried Yaku never been able to manage anything more than a patchy blur of colors, a bad camoflauge effect. And only then if he was standing in front of a stationary backround such as a solid-colored wall. Pretty much useless in real life. But Yaku hadn’t felt that bad about it. Only a few got it right--Kuroo (obviously), Daichi (Head Boy, all-around overachiever), Michimiya (Head Girl, all-around overachiver) and Suzumeda (charms prodigy.)

Lev paused. “....Yaku?” He fixed sharp green eyes on him. He was holding about seven giant cookies in his arms, which were already loaded with sweets.

“Oh...umm, yeah. Those are a Honeydukes product.” He continued to stare at him. Yaku wouldn't have expected it, but after all, he was a Triwizard candidate; he had to have  _some_  kind of merits that made his school’s administration consider him part of the handful of potential champions. And this was what he wasted his magic skills on. Yaku aproved. The pursuit of candy was a noble purpose. He had to admire his skill, even if Lev was otherwise a total idiot.


	3. Chapter 3

Yaku was watching from the window was the stream of people from Hogwarts was coming down the road into the village. It was starting to get frosty outside, and everyone was wearing striped scarves to show their house pride, or fur  
mufflers in the case of the foreign students. He tried to pet Kuroo’s cat, a small tortoiseshell sitting on the windowsill, licking its paw. The cat hissed and batted Yaku's hand away. “Okay, fine,” Yaku said. “Asshole,” he added, though he hadn’t really expected the cat to cooperate.

The door opened, and, letting in a gust of cold air, Hinata came bounding into the store with Lev close behind him, yammering about Merlin-knows-what. They were an odd pair, one so tall he needed to bend to avoid hitting the doorframe, and the other even shorter than Yaku. It didn't surprise Yaku that these two were friends. Both were loud, annoying, enthusiastic about anything and everything. They increased each other’s excitement just by being in the same area.

“Hey, Yaku, have you met Lev?” Hinata said, as he approached the counter setting down an enormous block of fudge that he'd randomly grabbed off a rack.

“Yes, I have met Lev,” Yaku said. “Unfortunately,” he added under his breath.

“Yeah,” Lev bounded over to him, again coming behind the counter space, on the forbidden side of the counter, and Yaku had to push him back to the other side. “This is my redhead midget friend I was talking about,” said Lev, patting Hinata on the head. “Hey!” Hinata protested.

“I know, Lev, we went to school together,” Yaku said, weighing Hinata’s treacle fudge on the magical scale.

“You went to Hogwarts?” exclaimed Lev, jaw dropping.

“What did you think? I wear my Slytherin jumper all the time,” he gestured to the emerald green jumper he wrote under his apron. The wool was fraying at the sleeves and a silver Slytherin crest emblazoned on the chest. It was old, and he knew he should probaly retire it from his closet soon, but no other sweater had the same feeling.

“Ohhhh!” he said, and then paused. “What’s a Slytherin?”

“Oh, Slytherin is one of the four houses...” Hinata explained, and as he went into detail about the four founders and the Sorting Hat, Yaku’s eyes wandered throughout the shop.

He saw Kageyama Tobio in front of the dairy-free sweets rack by himself, hands stuffed into his coat pockets. Kageyama looked across the room and spotted Hinata, his eyes narrowing. Hinata spotted him too and promptly stopped talking, breaking eye contact with the other boy. Now that was odd. Usually the two not-boyfriends walked through the village together, hand in hand, on their not-dates.

“Well,” Hinata said in an unnaturally high-pitched voice, “I’m going to go get some more things,” he said, and marched through the crowd right over to where Kageyama was standing.

Leaning forward, he accidentally-on-purpose elbowed Kageyama as he bent to get the last of the Peppermint Toads. Kageyama‘s arm jerked, he reached forward to snatch it back, then changed his mind. He crossed his arms and stalked away looking like he could shoot daggers from his eyes. Hinata grinned triumphantly, holding the bag of Peppermint Toads up like a trophy.

“What’s up with them?” Yaku leaned over the counter and whispered to Lev.

“WHAT?” Lev said.

“Kageyama and Hinata,” Yaku said, nodding his head toward the corner. “And don’t talk so loudly.”

“Oh,” said Lev, rummaging through his bag to find a butterscotch candy. “They did the Goblet ceremony last night.”

“Choosing the champions?” No wonder there were so many people in the shop today. There must have been many people buying self-consolation sweets, as people tend to do when they've had a bad day/week/life, disappointed and miserable because they didn’t get chosen.

“Yeah. Kageyama got picked but someone rigged the Goblet of Fire to make four names come out of the cup...so now they’re both champions.”

Yaku gaped. “Two Hogwarts champions? Is that even possible?”

Lev shrugged. “I don't get it either,” he said, chomping loudly. “Hinata says he didn't do it but Kageyama doesn't believe him.”

“And the other champions?” Yaku said. Some guy whose hair looked like a turnip was complaining loudly from the back of the queue about the line being too slow. Yaku ignored him.

“There’s Oikawa Tooru from Beauxbatons,” Lev said, and was it just Yaku or did he look kind of...sad? “and Ushijima from my school.” Lev swallowed, unwrapping another candy and shoving it into his mouth.

“Oh."

“Yeah.” He fell quiet, looking at the ground.

Yaku didn't know what to say. Had Lev seriously expected to win the nomination considering that he was up against Ushijima, world-famous Quidditch player with strength to rival even that of adult players who had been in the game for much longer?

Personally, Yaku thought the Triwizard Tournament seemed, almost, like a set-up. The three champions just happened to be hot, athletic, popular purebloods; it would make a good show. Now someone had entered a simple, average Muggleborn who looked twelve years old. At least the very first Muggleborn champion five years ago, nicknamed the Small Giant, was smart and cool.

Yaku remembered going to the Small Giant's funeral after the 3rd task of the Tournament, when he was fatally injured. Everyone had loved him, yet he had gone.The whole Tournament was suspicious. Why did the Muggleborn have to be the one that died? But maybe Yaku was just being cynical.

Hinata reappeared, and said to Lev, “Okay, let’s go.”

“Didn’t you want to buy Peppermint Toads?” said Yaku, ringing up Hinata’s other stuff.

“Oh, no, I hate Peppermint Toads,” Hinata said brightly, tugging Lev along with him. “Bye, Yaku!"

"Yeah, see you next weekend,” said Lev, still looking thoroughly depressed.

Yaku watched them go, feeling a squirm of pity. “Hey, Lev,” he called after them. The boy turned around, looking at him questioningly. “There’s--um, a new shipment of Chocolate Cauldrons on Monday, those are your favorite, right? I could, uh, send them to you by owl.”

Lev’s eyes widened and then he nodded, looking happy for the first time today. “Okay.”

"Okay,” said Yaku. And he watched the pair walk out of the shop, yammering away at each other with their mouths full of candy.

“Picking favorites, Morisuke?” Kuroo said, happening to walk by on his way to the back room.

Yaku jumped. “No! We've been planning to start this owl-order service forever.”

“Sure, sure,” he said.

Yaku flushed and turned away. The crowd was seething now, waiting impatiently. “Next," he called, aware that Kuroo was smirking from behind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: candy-making demonstrations, edible spiders, and Yaku meets Lev’s sister

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uhhhh this is the first chapter I've written THIS year, so if you notice wild changes in style, that's why. apparently I've gotten a lot more loquacious in the past year because this chapter is way longer than tHan the rest.

Yaku woke up with a feeling of nervousness in the pit of his stomach. Today was the day. The Saturday after Halloween, the day he was going to do the candy demonstration. They did this every now and then, a brief show of how they made their candies. Doing magic. In front of everyone. Yaku felt a knot of dread in his stomach even though he was only doing half the show, and Kenma was handling the harder bits.

He stayed for a minute longer and then rose, throwing on his clothes. He went out into the shop area, wandering down the aisles, straightening things last minute.

You'd think Yaku would be tired of it, after all this time, but he loved being awake in these morning hours, in the silent store full of brightly colored sweets lined up against the walls, and piles of pastries in ribboned boxes, and everything a sugar lover could ever want. The floors gleamed, the lights were on, ready to go for the day ahead. It was like the moment before a jump: holding your breath, waiting for the thrilling drop in your stomach. At precisely 9 am he turned the sign on the window to Open. People, mostly villagers this early in the morning, began to trickle in, and Yaku set up the table as the people clustered around him. Some came specifically to see this, others were people who just happened to stop by.

Yaku looked around at all the people waiting, watching, and felt oddly nervous. He wasn't a shy person. He'd done this before, he told himself as he gripped his wand under the table with a sweaty palm. “Right now I'm making one of our most popular confections, Candy Clouds."

He gestured to the huge metal bowl in front of him. It looked quite similar to a cotton candy machine and, as Yaku poured in the colored sugar, he remembered doing something similar at summer festivals in the Muggle world. It was a familiar process, one that he understood. The heater in the middle melted the sugar, which was then squeezed out through tiny holes by centrifugal force and then hardened into very thin strands which could be gathered into a fluffy substance--part sugar, mostly air, a puffy cloud of flavored sugar that melted in your mouth.

By Honeydukes tradition, Yaku had to charm the machine so that it could build up the fluff by itself, even though a person whipping it with a stick would gather the fluff ten times faster. Well at least the audience liked it. He waited, annoyed at how much time this was taking, pouring more sugar in periodically along with drops of a glistening white potion.

"What's that?" asked a kid.

"This potion? It's going to help make the clouds float."

"What's in it?" 

Yaku smiled. "It's a secret." He'd thought it up himself. The potion was a modified version of an anti-gravity potion which, in small quantities, bound with the sugar to create a levitation effect. And because the potion was in such small quantities it didn't affect the consumer.

Almost as soon as the candyfloss formed clouds, it began to rise in the air. Yaku thanked his stars that he didn't have to cast some version of the Levitation Spell-- _Wingardium Leviosa,_  such a basic charm that even eleven-year-old firsties could do. He'd done much harder spells, yet he could never quite get that _swish_ _and flick_ the way his classmates could. It was one of those arbitrary spells where the magic was there, he could feel it in his fingertips but it didn't come though he followed the same instructions everyone else did. Something in his brain got mixed up, something he couldn't explain. So Yaku was glad all he had to do now was point his wand and give the clouds a few pushes of air. The puffy bits of candy floss floated through the air above the people, like real clouds, and they all watched in silence.

It was thirty seconds before a kid reached up, grabbed a handful of cloud, and devoured it, setting off a chain reaction where other people began to do the same. The machine was creating more clouds by the second, filling up the air and replacing the sugary fluff being consumed by the ravenous customers.

In Yaku’s opinion, Candy Clouds were a terrible idea and he cursed whoever came up with it every time they had one of these events (or when people opened their prepackaged clouds inside the shop, despite **OPEN OUTDOORS** printed on the plastic bag). It was nothing but a mess--candyfloss bits everywhere; sticky bite marks in midair; cotton candy obscuring people's vision or getting caught in their hair. But he had to admit, it was visually pleasing, the pastel-blue clouds of spun sugar drifting serenely throughout the shop. Just looking at them gave him a vague sense of relief in his chest.

"Hey, can we get pink clouds next?" asked a girl hardly as tall as the table.

"Sure," Yaku said and, rather than open a new box of sugar, quietly whispered a Color-Switch incantation. He breathed a sigh of relief when the spell turned the current batch of sugar pink.

"Ooh," said the little girl, eyes widening in delight.

He let the machine continue, hoping the spell would hold up while he went on to the next demonstration. Candied apples. A simple recipe but still would need utmost concentration. Clutching his wand under the table, Yaku took a deep breath and began.

+

Some time later, Yaku put down his wand and moved the already-made batches to the side so people could continue taking free samples while he cleared the table. Yaku had saved the best for last and his heart was thumping like mad. "Alright," he said loudly. "Now, in the spirit of Halloween, I'm going to show you a one of our unique limited edition specialties." 

He reached under the table and brought out a small glass cage.

The crowd gasped.

"A tarantula?"

"Did it just move?"

"This," Yaku said proudly. "Is one of our Edible Beasts collection, only available during holiday season." He held up the cage, letting everyone see it.

The "tarantula" was moving around in its cage. It was a strange little thing, about the size of his palm, and looked both fake and not fake. The creature was shaped and acted like a spider, but lacked hair and was golden-orange all over and looked almost plastic except that Yaku knew it wasn't. Rather, its exoskeleton was made of thin crunchy fried dough with crystallized sugar on the outside and sticky-sweet syrup inside. He handed it over to Kenma, who took the creature out of its cage for all to see before severing one of its wriggling legs and offering it to the horrified crowd.

"You are about to witness a process that has never been shown to the public before." Yaku said, talking fast. "I'm going to show you how we make it from scratch."

Well that wasn't strictly true, but the audience had no interest in watching him painstakingly shaping the dough and having to stop and restart fifty times. He acciod the tray from the kitchen. All the spider's parts were laid out on the wax paper, the dough sealed to keep its shape. He turned on the burner (not with his wand, nope, he didn't fuck around when it came to fire) and was about to start deep frying when he heard the bell ring.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yaku saw a tall, silver-haired boy walk into the shop. His heart skipped a beat--what was Lev doing here? It was a Saturday, yes, but too early for students to be out. Their eyes met accross the shop, Lev smiled a stupid wide grin. For some reason Yaku felt an odd jolt inside.

Lev stepped forward and hurtled his face right into a stray Candy Cloud. Yaku bit down a laugh. 

"Your oil!" yelled an audience member.

"Shit," said Yaku, looking down. The oil was overheating and beginning to splatter. "Move back, everyone," Yaku instructed, and he quickly put a cover on the pot and lowered the heat, sighing. That was close. He didn't want to think about how it would look if he caused a fire.

This was all Lev’s fault. Yaku looked over at Lev, intending to glare at him, but found him staring back with those big, catlike eyes. Flushing, Yaku turned back to his work, picking up the tongs with shaking fingers. Lev was there, watching, as Yaku dropped individual spider parts into the deep fryer. Yaku felt suddenly self-conscious. Which made no sense because it was just Lev, stupid Lev, who embarrassed himself on a daily basis.

As the audience looked on, he turned the pieces over until they became perfect golden-orange shade. After they reached the right color, Yaku took the parts and set them in a vat of sugar syrup he'd prepared ahead of time. Ideally, he'd let them soak in the syrup for a few hours for max tooth-rotting sweetness, but no time today. One by one he finished frying all the spider's appendages. Now to assemble it. Yaku picked up his wand. He was vaguely aware that he should've been using magic at least part of the time, but oh well, too late for that. Yaku stared at the thing and then with a wave of the wand, he brought all the legs together, attaching them to the body.

The crowd faded away and all he could see was the tiny creature in front of him and then, holding his breath, he muttered the final spell. Everyone leaned closer, watching with rapt attention as the spider sat silently on the table.

Yaku’s heart sank. It hadn’t worked. His spell had failed. He was done for. He didn't deserve to work here--

The spider twitched.

The crowd sucked in a collective breath as the tarantula began to wiggle its legs and then suddenly it was crawling up Yaku’s arm. He stared, just as mesmerized as everyone else. This thing which he'd made with own hands, as lifelike as a real critter. He felt a shiver of amazement. It never failed to astound Yaku, the way it seemed he could breathe life into an inanimate thing, the fulfillment of childhood games of make-believe.

"How'd you do that?" said someone and Yaku looked to see a very pretty silver-haired girl a few years and several centimeters taller than Yaku, standing next to Lev. She was holding hands with a blonde in a dragon leather jacket--Saeko Tanaka, who'd graduated when he was a third year.

Yaku cleared his throat. “It’s an Animation Spell. It's similar to a Chocolate Frog, reflecting the imprint of a soul without actually having a soul. You know, like transfiguring a teacup into a mouse." He relaxed his shoulders, relieved to be discussing theory now. "We also sell other creatures," Yaku pointed in the direction of the recently set up minicages. "But personally, this one's my favorite." 

He held the spider out. “Who wants to hold it?”

The majority of the crowd backed away, but one boy leaned forward eagerly. “Oooh, me, me,” said Lev, and he held out his arm and allowed the spider to crawl from Yaku’s hand to Lev’s own hand. “Whoa,” Lev said. “It’s like the licorice spiders but like, cooler."

“Eek!” said Saeko and jumped back, releasing Lev’s sister's hand.

Lev’s sister giggled. “Some Gryffindor you are,” she teased.

“I’ve fought an Acromantula before,” Saeko huffed.

“So you can kill a giant spider but a little one made out candy is scary?"

"That's not a _little_ spider, that's a fucking tarantula."

Yaku tried to take the spider back from Lev but he didnt want to give it up, so Yaku started on the next spider, the crowd converging on him to watch the process again. As Yaku fumbled for the tools, he looked up to see Lev smiling at him and he could feel the heat rushing to his face but then he looked up again and Lev was gone, headed accross the shop to find more candy.

It was nearing noon before he finally handed the demonstration to Kenma and then he was relieved to get back to his real duty.

“No,” said Kuroo. “I’m manning the register”

“But--”

“I am ordering you, as your manager, to go take a break.”

“Ugh, fine.” Yaku said, then retreated to his room for a well-deserved nap.

+

He should never have trusted Kuroo.

"Two hours," Yaku muttered. "I leave for two hours, and this is what happens."

It was chaos. Not only was there a mess left over from the demonstration, but there's no one at the register. Little kids were running down the aisles and sweets strewn all over the floor. Kuroo was trying to handle a fuming middle-aged customer who was yelling about how her son has nut allergies and _could have died_ , Kuroo’s attempts to charm her only feuling her anger. Accross the shop, Yaku spotted a tough-looking Beauxbatons boy with dark eyeliner pocketing a nougat.

Yaku marched accross the shop to lecture him about shoplifting when he saw a brown-haired boy grab him by the arm and tell him to put it back. “Fuck off, Yahaba,” grumbled the boy, but he obeyed.

Well then.

Meanwhile he heard shouting at his left and turned to see Kageyama and Hinata yelling at each other. Remembering that the duo had been fighting last week, Yaku approached the pair, prepared to break up the argument.

"I don't need you to pay for my shit," Hinata was yelling.

"Obviously I do because you never have any money."

"It's my turn to pay."

"Do you fucking _have_ any money?"

"Well...no, but that's not the point, you asshole."

As he got closer Yaku noticed that they were holding hands. He rolled his eyes. Of course. "Guys," he stepped between them. "Hinata, just let your boyfriend pay for your candy and next time remember to bring money. Okay?"

Both teenagers went bright red, still holding each other's hand. "He's not my--" they began simultaneously.

"Yeah, yeah," Yaku said. He didn't have time for this.

Hearing a commotion in the other aisle, he hurried over to see a mess of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans on the floor. Matsukawa and Hanamaki from Beauxbatons were chomping straight out of the barrels, apparently competing to see who could eat more of their respective barrels while a small crowd cheered them on.

Yaku was speechless.

Matsukawa spit out a bean. "Ew, bogies!" He looked up at Yaku, mouth crammed with beans. “Don’t worry, we'll pay.”

Yaku continued to gape at the scattered, mostly crushed jelly beans all over the floor.

He sighed. It was going to be a long day.

+

"I don't know what I would do without you, Yaku," said Kuroo, sinking into the folding chair. The sun was setting, the shop had finally cleared out and there was hardly anyone left. They'd gotten through the day, under Yaku’s direction and now the place was almost back to normal--trash picked up, shelves fixed, all Candy Clouds captured and/or eaten. "What could I ever do to thank you?"

"Give me a raise, maybe?" Yaku was joking. Though he'd like to have more money. Maybe enough to get a real place, or eat something other than leftover baked goods. Maybe enough to send home for his three sisters.

"You know I don't control that." Kuroo leaned back in his chair. "Actually though, I was thinking...how would you feel about taking over?"

Yaku's eyes widened. "What?"

"I mean, you do most of the work around here anyway..."

Yaku smirked. "Oh, you're admitting it now?"

Kuroo didn't smirk back. "Well...yeah." Yaku stiffened at the seriousness of his tone.

"And it's not like I _need_ two jobs."

Yaku got up angrily, chair scraping against the floor. "Fuck off." Just because Kuroo was well-off didn't mean he had to rub it in.

Kuroo winced. "That's not what I--"

The bell rang and in walked a customer. "Lev? What are you doing off school grounds? Everyone's gone back." Kuroo said.

"Oh, I'm with my sister and Saeko, they're buying some...uh...supplies for the drag--I mean, the--" Lev froze, a guilty look on his face.

"The what?" Yaku said as he sorted the leftover jelly beans into piles.

"The...they work with dragons. But there's no dragons like, here, so don't worry," Lev added hastily. "No dragons in the Tournament, haha..."

"Oh?" said Kuroo, eyes gleaming.

Yaku gave him a look and then changed the topic. "Alisa doesn't seem like the trainer type," he said, and immediately felt like smacking himself for judging Lev’s sister by her looks.

"Yeah, Alisa's a dragonologist," Lev said. He sat on the counter. "She works at the dragon sanctuary."

"Sanctuary?" Yaku stopped sorting and frowned. That sounded familiar for some reason. "Oh! That's where Yuu works. Nishinoya Yuu? He's a trainer." 

"Ryuu's friend?"

"Yeah." No wonder he’d thought Alisa didn't look the type. The trainer type, in Yaku’s head was a small, energetic Hufflepuff with eyes like melted chocolate (semi-sweet) and the liveliest smile Yaku had ever seen.

Yaku looked away and buried his hands in jelly beans. He hadn’t seen Nishinoya in a while. Not that it mattered, Yaku knew he was busy. They'd agreed to part on mutual terms with no hard feelings because Nishinoya was going to travel the world with his best friend and he didn't want to do long-distance and Yaku agreed that it was impractical.

Still. Nishinoya could've at least owled.

"Actually," Lev was saying. "It's thanks to Ryuu that Alisa and Saeko met. Saeko was trying to poach a dragon egg so Ryuu let her sneak in--"

"She was _what_?"

"--and then Alisa catches her and she says 'I'm going to turn you in to the ministry'--"

"Your sister's beautiful," Kuroo said, a dazed look on his face.

"Don't interrupt," said Yaku. "Go on, Lev."

But his attention had already shifted away from his interesting story. "Oh yeah, we're one-third Veela," Lev leaned over and attempted to take a jelly bean from one of Yaku's piles, but Yaku blocked him.

"You can't be one- _third_ Veela."

Kuroo snapped out of it. "He could be one third, if some of his grandparents are Veela and it adds up to a third."

"You can't divide eight grandparents into three."

"Okay, what about like great-great-great-grandparents?"

"That's 64, it still doesn't divide to three."

"What about great-great-great-great--"

"Now you're just being ridiculous."

Lev looked back and forth between the two of them, frowning confusedly. "Lev, get off the counter, I need space," said Yaku. Lev got off, accidentally sending a pile of jelly beans skittering onto the floor. Yaku didn't blink. That was the "gross flavors" pile anyway.

"Sorry," Lev said, bending down and attempting to gather the beans.

"It's okay, those were the gross--" Yaku glanced at Lev, and spotted a movement on his shoulder. "Lev, what the fuck."

Lev looked up. "What?"

"You're supposed to _eat_ the spider!"

Lev gasped, his hand moving to shield the scuttling creature on his shoulder. "But I just can't eat her..."

"Her?" Yaku said, voice rising. "It's not real."

"But it looks real." Yaku lunged for the spider, but Lev held it out of his reach. "You made her," Lev cried. "How could you be so heartless?"

"Yes, I made her and I'm saying you should eat her. I will be _personally offended_ if you do not eat this spider."

"Lev, I hate to take Yaku's side," Kuroo said, "...but that thing's going to get nasty real quick."

"I don't care," Lev said. "I don't care what you say."

"Would you keep a Chocolate Frog this long?" Yaku asked.

"Chocolate Frogs are gross." Yaku made a mental note of the only candy Lev had ever expressed direct dislike over. "This one's like, fancy. That's why you sell them for a Galleon each, right?"

"Yeah because it's handmade and it takes forever but never mind that, you have to--" The bell rang and Yaku quickly turned around. He'd forgotten they were still open, if only for the next few minutes. He cleared his throat. “Welcome to Honeydukes--oh, hi Alisa, Saeko."

"Hi," responded Alisa, then she spotted her brother. "Lev?" Alisa frowned. "Aren't you supposed to be back at Hogwarts?"

"Umm..." Lev fidgeted.

Kuroo raised his eyebrows. "Wait. You guys didn't know he was here?"

"No!" Saeko said. "Why would he be here? All by himself." She looked accusingly at Yaku, who bristled.

"That's dangerous," Kuroo said in his responsible Auror voice. “Very dangerous. I'm going to take you right back up to the school." He stood up and took Lev’s arm, making a move to brush off the spider.

"NO!" Lev said, setting the spider down on the counter and shielding it with his body. "I won't let you kill her."

Yaku looked over at Alisa. "Can you please tell your brother he's being ridiculous?"

Alisa sighed. "Lev, please. It's a piece of candy."

"I can't believe you're supporting animal cruelty! You're a vegetarian!"

"Lev..."

_Wham!_ Saeko punched the counter, destroying the confectionery creature quicker than any of them could even blink. There was an awful crunch as her fist crushed the delicate creation's exoskeleton, rupturing its body and causing syrup to burst forth, thick and golden. She lifted her fist, wiping the stickiness on the counter. Three of the artificial arachnid's legs were still twitching in the pool of syrup despite it's crushed-to-bits head and body, until finally the movement came to a stop.

"Well, that's that," Saeko said. "Now can we move on?" 

A shocked silence hung in the air. They all stared at her. All except for Lev, who was staring at the spider's remains. He looked, Yaku thought, like he could puke. "Hey," Yaku said quietly, fighting the urge to put his hand on Lev’s shoulder because a) that would feel like crossing a line and b) he could barely reach. “It's okay, I can make you a new one."

"No," Lev crossed his arms over his chest. "No, I don't want one." He took a deep breath and turned to Kuroo. "Let's go."

"Uh," Kuroo blinked, still in shock. "Yeah. Let's go."

Alisa stepped towards Yaku. “Sorry about Lev," she was whispering, though Yaku was the only one in earshot. Saeko was casually browsing through the sweets selection, grinning to herself, apparently proud of her newfound status as a candy-spider murderer. "Lev gets...attached...to things. Things...and people." She stared at him meaningfully.

He stared back, not knowing what to say. "We're closed."

“I'm buying these caramels!" said Saeko, running up to the counter.

"We're. Closed." He pointed at the clock. "It's past 8 pm."

"It's 8:03." She narrowed her eyes at him.

"And we got here before eight," Alisa pointed out.

Yaku was exhausted. There was a sticky mess on the counter, the ruins of one of his precious creations. It was meant to be savored, not smashed like a common bug. And yeah, she hadnt meant it maliciously and maybe it was silly to get defensive over one dessert but this was his territory, his rules and anyway, it _was_ past eight. 

"I just want one thing, come on," said Saeko. 

"Too bad," he said, and then he was ushering them out the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never thought I would write the sentence "I will be personally offended if you do not eat this spider." 
> 
> lowkey the tarantulas are made of jalepi it's this crunchy sticky sweet and when you bite into it like bursts in your mouth and yes it is as delicious as it sounds.


End file.
